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Like many conservatives, traditionalists and Republicans who didn't want to ape the caustic rhetoric of the neo-Marxist Progressive-Left used during the entirety of the Bush Administration, I promised myself to refrain from immediately assuming that Barack Obama was going to bring with him to the White House the backroom politics of Chicago's Democrat Machine. I employed the Reagan doctrine of "trust but verify." Well, the verdict is in and the political tactics and policies that Barack Obama has brought to the Executive Branch are not only of the old school "Chicago Way," they are literally neo-Marxist and naïve.

Let me explain the "Chicago Way."

Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, have been under Democrat control for as long as I have been alive and before. Most of us grew up watching newsmen like Fahey Flynn, listening to radio journalists like Wally Phillips and reading print journalists like Mike Royko, we were provided a daily examination of the Richard J. Daley Administration; we were afforded an advanced degree in Chicago-style political politics. It is the politics of smoky backrooms and "old boy networks," patronage, pay-to-play contracting, and governmental protection and appointment of campaign contributors and their families. In Chicago, if it's about power or money for the elected class and/or the enrichment and advancement of their political allies it most likely becomes governmental policy and viewed as necessary for "saving grace" of society.

From Mr. Obama's campaign staff and tactics to his initial executive actions, from his White House cabinet appointments to the administration's protection of AIG, each and every action has been textbook Chicago politics, and why not. Barack Obama cut his teeth and "rolled his bones" within the caldron of Chicago's political arena.

In a previous article titled, This Is What a Vote for Obama Gets You, I tried to convey, if even in the most rudimentary of ways, what we could expect if Barack Obama were to be elected President of the United States. Well, that has come to pass and we are now faced with the prospect of having to -- of needing to -- abandon our apathy for governmental oversight while becoming learned in political and governmental current events.

Two disturbing examples of why we have to return to the frontlines of governmental and political oversight present in the issues of the AIG bailout and newly passed legislation to recoup bailout monies used to satisfy retention incentive bonuses set in place before any bailout monies were issued.

The feigned outrage by some of the very people who manufactured the subprime mortgage crisis (specifically US Rep. Barney Frank and US Sen. Chris Dodd) over the $165 million dollars in contractually obligated retention bonuses is, in fact, a traditional Chicago political tactic to redirect attention and deflect.

Consider this question: Which would cause you to be more outraged, $165 million in retention bonuses paid to Americans so that they would stay beyond their contracts to finish the projects they were hired to do, or billions of dollars being funneled, not only to corporations that have already benefited from the taxpayer bailout, but to foreign banks?

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